Questions and postings pertaining to the development of ImageMagick, feature enhancements, and ImageMagick internals. ImageMagick source code and algorithms are discussed here. Usage questions which are too arcane for the normal user list should also be posted here.

Options (image_info) whcih is used to hold user defined global options (across all images).
In command line these are also automatically converted into image artifacts (see below)
Also in CLI -define sets these, as does -set option:....

Properities (image) whcih hold free-form image meta-data that should be saved with the image (if possible).
in command line -set sets these strings. This includes "label" "comment", and the file "date-*" time stamps.

Artifacts (image) which are per-image controls and settings that should NOT be saved with the image.
Typically used for holw coder and operational settings, such as "jpeg:q-table".

In command line "Options" such as "background" "delay" "compose" are copied into "Artifacts" as often a core library operation only has access to the image structure and not the associated image_info structure.

In IMv7, I am looking to replace that copy with a (temporary and non-permanent) link from image structure to the associated image_info structure. But that means that any 'artifact' lookup, should first look at per-image Artifacts, then automatically fall back to looking up a global 'image_info' option. This is a drastic change but one I feel nessary to remove the current constant copiying that CLI is performing.